Charlie Brandt never faced a judge for any of the deaths attached to his name. At 13, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he killed his mother and harmed his father; he was never charged and never tried. More than thirty years later, in September 2004, investigators in Orlando, Florida, concluded that he had killed his wife and her niece and then died by suicide. In the months after, detectives in the Florida Keys and Miami looked again at older unsolved deaths of women and named him in connection with two of them. None of those cases reached a court, and the question of how many people he killed was never settled. Every statement about a death after 1971 is an attribution by investigators and not a finding of guilt.
The Brandt family lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where Charlie was 13 in the winter of 1971. One evening in January, CBS News reported in a 48 Hours program, his mother, who was eight months pregnant, was killed and his father was hurt but survived. Charlie had also turned on his 15-year-old sister, who escaped unharmed to a neighbor's house. He told a neighbor what he had done, and police took him into custody; Detective Dan Figel led the inquiry.
The legal outcome of 1971 is not a conviction or an acquittal. CBS reported that three court-ordered psychological evaluations found no diagnosable mental illness. A psychiatrist who took part, Ronald Pancner, said the examiners found no psychosis or distorted thinking and could not account for the crime. Because of his age Charlie was never charged or tried, and CBS summarized the result as: he "was never held criminally responsible for his moment of madness." A grand jury, according to the same report, warned that such behavior could recur. He spent just over a year in a psychiatric hospital. His father arranged his release and moved the family to Florida. By CBS's account, the family never discussed what had happened with him, and his younger sisters were not told the truth about their mother's death.
On August 29, 1986, Charlie married Teri. A former brother-in-law who was the best man later told investigators that Charlie had told Teri about 1971, and that Teri had said she did not think having children was a good idea, which he took to mean she knew about the past. The couple settled on Big Pine Key, in the Florida Keys.
In July 1989 a 38-year-old woman named Sherry Perisho died on Big Pine Key. WSVN, the Miami television station, reported in 2013 that the case produced no suspect for seventeen years. CBS reported that investigators led by Detective Trish Dally later relied on an account from the former brother-in-law, who said that Teri had told him of a night in 1989 when she thought something was wrong with her husband and did not call the sheriff. Detectives treated that as the basis for connecting Charlie to Perisho's death. He was never charged, and no court finding is on record. The attribution rests on what Teri was reported to have said.
Darlene Toler died in Miami in 1995. WSVN placed her among a group of South Florida cases that police considered alike. CBS reported that investigators linked him to her case through forensic comparison and travel records, and that DNA testing was still pending. Detective Pat Diaz, who handled the case, told CBS she considered Brandt responsible. These are investigators' inferences. No charge was filed, and he could not be tried.
In September 2004 Hurricane Ivan led to an evacuation of the Florida Keys, and Teri and Charlie went to stay with her niece, Michelle Jones, 37, in Orlando. All three died there.
Investigator Rob Hemmert concluded that Charlie had killed both women and then died by suicide. No court examined the evidence, because the one person who could have been charged had died.
The 2004 account rests on the detectives' reading of the evidence.
His sister went to the police after the deaths and told them about 1971. Investigators then reviewed unsolved cases with similar features. A criminal profiler, Leslie D'Ambrosia, assisted and noted that Charlie had traveled widely in the United States and abroad. WSVN reported that police believed he may have killed between 10 and 12 women, possibly as many as 14, including nine other cases in South Florida that detectives considered similar, but said that could never be confirmed because he died by suicide. CBS wrote that investigators could not determine the total number of victims; many of the cases were old and had little physical evidence. Only Perisho and Toler have been publicly named as cases tied to him, and both ties remain attributions.
His father and his sister both lived in Florida when CBS reported and declined interviews. The family refused to release Charlie's psychiatric hospital records. In July 2006 a judge in Indiana released them to Hemmert, not to the public, and Hemmert said the records helped explain motive. Michelle's parents blamed Charlie's father and sister for failing to get him help after 1971 and pushed for a public database of anyone who has ever killed another person. Whether any such database was created is not on record.
The number of Charlie Brandt's victims is not known. The only deaths that investigators attributed to him with a direct basis in physical evidence are those of Teri Brandt and Michelle Jones in 2004; CBS reported that police linked him definitively to only one additional death, without naming it. The 1989 attribution rests on a relative's recollection of what Teri said. The 1995 attribution rests on forensic comparison and travel records, with DNA results pending. The statement that he killed 10 to 14 women is a police belief, reported by WSVN in 2013, and no list of those women has been published. Accounts also differ on whether the Perisho case was treated as solved.
January 1971: at 13, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Charlie Brandt kills his mother and harms his father; he is not charged.
1971 to 1972: court-ordered evaluations find no diagnosable mental illness; he spends just over a year in a psychiatric hospital; the family moves to Florida.
August 29, 1986: he marries Teri.
July 1989: Sherry Perisho, 38, dies on Big Pine Key; later attributed to him.
1995: Darlene Toler dies in Miami; later attributed to him.
September 2004: Hurricane Ivan evacuation; Teri Brandt and Michelle Jones, 37, die in Orlando; Charlie Brandt dies by suicide; investigators conclude he killed both women.
July 2006: an Indiana judge releases his psychiatric hospital records to the investigator, not to the public.